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Main » Articles » Priming for Vintage

Priming for Vintage

Jimi Brady
Posted on June 5, 2014
 Reddit

Watching a Vintage tournament is a little bit like visiting a private art gallery: You see people using decks worth thousands of dollars with cards that they’ve probably spent years saving up for—or otherwise have won through tournaments. While smaller events allow a certain number of proxied cards, the reality of being a Vintage player means pursuing and owning the Power Nine, which are often the grand prizes at small and large tournaments alike.

Black Lotus
For the uninitiated, the Power Nine are Time Walk, Ancestral Recall, Timetwister, Mox Pearl, Mox Sapphire, Mox Ruby, Mox Jet, Mox Emerald, and Black Lotus. These cards are largely considered the most powerful ever printed, though Timetwister is often contended in favor of cards such as Library of Alexandria and Yawgmoth's Will.

In the world of Vintage, owning pieces of the Power Nine is the ultimate goal, much like winning a Grand Prix or qualifying for the Pro Tour is for the average competitive Magic player. Due to the prohibitive costs of cards in Vintage, however, the format has remained largely unnoticed by the Magic community, and the player base is relatively small. Large events top out at three hundred players, while most other events draw anywhere between thirty and one hundred. The majority of these events are located in Europe, which can be problematic for those who live elsewhere.

So, as you can imagine, Vintage Masters is about to shake things up.

For the first time ever, Vintage will be open to the average Joe, Jane, and Jeff, with reasonably-costed decks and total access to tournaments and events regardless of location. While we can expect certain cards to be expensive, they’ll still be orders of magnitude cheaper than their paper counterparts.

Will Vintage Masters negatively impact events such as the yearly Bazaar of Moxen tournaments? Almost certainly not. Nothing beats the tactile and sensory appeal of holding real cards and staring down real opponents. Existing Vintage players are not going to stop attending events, nor are newer Vintage players going to stop pursuing tournaments with Power on the line.

Gush
We can expect, however, that there will be players introduced to the format through Magic Online who will decide to pursue Vintage in the real world. Just as players often dip their toes into Legacy and Modern through Magic Online before laying down paychecks on decks, so too will it happen with Vintage. Stephen Menendian, Vintage maestro and author of Understanding Gush, agreed on this count, saying that “Vintage Masters should help online players learn the Vintage format, and therefore drive and contribute to Vintage tournament attendance.”

While Vintage may give the impression that decks lack variety ("moxen, Black Lotus, Time Walk, Ancestral Recall, Jace . . . I think we're done here"), this is not at all the case. Stephen explained it to me: “Because of the incredible amount of tinkering that occurs in Vintage, the number of competitive decks depends greatly on how you decide to classify them.” (Author’s note: Using any form of the word “Tinker” when discussing Vintage always results in a pun. Always.)

Vintage players are not typically playing untested brews—very few people would have the guts to lay down thousands of dollars on the off-chance that their ideas are viable in a tournament setting. Vintage events are important enough that players want to be using known quantities. As such, existing decks are tweaked and tinkered with, thus creating subcategories of the archetypes.

Tezzeret the Seeker
The advent of Vintage Masters means that thousands upon thousands of players will now have the opportunity to brew like there’s no tomorrow. Existing decks will be weighed and measured, and new decks will dominate or be dominated. It seems highly probable that the format will be changed on all fronts, and almost certainly for the better.

So, which deck should you play when Vintage Masters is unleashed? Compiled below are four decks spanning the holy trinity of deck types: control, combo, and aggro. Whether you play G/W Hatebears in Modern or Ad Nauseam Tendrils in Legacy, Vintage (probably) has a deck for you.

If you’re a blue mage, you have access to the largest variety of decks, and this is one of the better ones. While Tezzeret the Seeker is used in Modern and Legacy, his true home is Vintage. Tezzerator Control features one of the simplest and most effective combos in Vintage: Time Vault and Voltaic Key. Tutor them up with Tezz, cast them with mana open, and enjoy your infinite turns. Alternatively, beat your opponent’s face in with 5/5 moxen. Or just kill the opponent with a Blightsteel Colossus put into play by Tinker—Tezzeret isn’t picky. Sower of Temptation is in the sideboard in case you feel like living the dream by taking control of an opposing Colossus. Here’s a version of the deck that was piloted by Rodrigo Togores at a smaller event in Madrid:

Tezzerator ? Vintage | Rodrigo Togores



As Stephen Menendian literally wrote the book on Gush, it seems appropriate to show off a Gush Storm list that he piloted last year. This deck has an absolutely brutal storm combo: Play Fastbond and then cast Gush for its alternate cost. By tapping and replaying the lands, you can effectively generate double mana, thus allowing you to more easily combo off while drawing cards. Alternatively, with Young Pyromancer in play, you can create a huge number of Elemental tokens every turn through normal deck operations (casting moxen, countering everything, and so on), or the Gush–Fastbond combo if Tendrils of Agony can’t be cast for whatever reason.

As with most Storm decks, plays can be extraordinarily complicated, and fizzling is always a possibility. With Flusterstorm being a staple in the format, you must be exceedingly careful about when you decide to blast your opponent (or connect a bunch of tentacle things to his or her head, I guess). And what if you do fizzle? No problem; just cast Yawgmoth's Will and go to town again.

Gush Storm ? Vintage | Stephen Menendian



Fans of Tron and other controlling, artifact-based decks will love MUD. (Fun fact: The name is a reference to the color of old artifact cards, which is decidedly muddy.) MUD uses cards like Chalice of the Void and Smokestack to control the opponent while beating down with Mishra's Factory and Steel Hellkite. This deck, like Modern Affinity or Tron, has unparalleled mana acceleration: Dropping a Steel Hellkite on turn two or three should be a common occurrence. As with other decks in Vintage, MUD has different incarnations, ranging from the extremely aggressive to the controlling Stax builds. Below is an aggressive build by Javier David, who used it in a Bazaar of Moxen trial event.

Aggro MUD ? Vintage | Javier David



If you’re like I am—and the thought of dropping Gaddock Teeg and Dark Confidant on turn one is enough to give you chills—you’re gonna love this next one. Junk Hatebears (also known as Haterator) is just about the most fun you can have without Time Walk. The strategy is fairly simple: Cast your most hateful of bears, and watch your opponent sweat while he or she holds Tezzeret and Tinker, unable to cast or play them while you have the old Kithkin and an Aven Mindcensor on the battlefield. This deck is tailor-made to punish blue mages, of which there are many in Vintage. One of the upsides of playing this deck is that it only runs four of the Power Nine—Black Lotus, Mox Pearl, Mox Jet, and Mox Emerald—making it a little less costly than other decks. As for me, I’m a Junk/Necra mage at heart, and I will be playing this deck no matter the cost. This version was constructed by frequent Vintage tournament-goer Ryan Glackin.

Junk Hatebears ? Vintage | Ryan Glackin



Remember that these four archetypes have several variations, so what you see here is only a tiny sample of what you could be playing. Decks like Goblins and Merfolk are also competitive, as are variations of Painter's Servant decks from Legacy. For most of us, Vintage is new and unfamiliar territory, but it certainly doesn’t have to be intimidating. If you’re on the fence about playing, I highly recommend that you read a few primers on the various archetypes and watch some of the Bazaar of Moxen events on YouTube. Come June 16, I’ll be deep in the trenches looking for the Power Nine, and I hope you’ll join me. Finally, I’d like to thank Stephen Menendian for his insight into the format—thanks, Stephen!

Stay in the Light,

Jimi

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TAGS articles, introduction, constructed, analysis, vintage, primer, decklist, vintage masters, jimi brady

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